John Slade

John Slade (19 December 1959-) was an American special forces operative who rescued journalist Frank Morris from the Sandinistas during the Nicaraguan Civil War in 1988.

Biography
John Slade was born on 19 December 1959 in Miami, Florida, in the United States. He used to serve in the Green Berets, and later returned home to run a dry-cleaning business. One day in 1988, masked men cornered him as he left his office with a sack of clothes, with one of them wielding a chain and another one using a baseball bat. Slade beat them down, but not before one of them slipped a bag of cocaine into his shirt pocket. The Miami Police Department arrived and arrested him, and he was sent to the police station on 400 N.W. 2nd Avenue. A man entered his jail, and Slade asked him if he was a lawyer; the man said that he could bail him out in exchange for a favor, or else he would be in jail for ten years. Slade was taken to the roof by the man, who introduced him to General Rosen and bureaucrat Mr. Colbert.

General Rosen took out a picture of a man, and Slade identified him as Frank Morris. Rosen told him that he was a journalist on assignment in Nicaragua, but the Sandinistas arrested him as a spy. Rosen wanted Slade, who was one of the best in extraction from hostile territories, to rescue the war hero Morris from Nicaragua. Slade was told that if he refused, he would spend the next ten years in jail; it was Rosen's special incentives program. Colbert told him that the Nicaraguans informed Colbert that he was being held in a military area in the northern part of the country, but the location was being rotated every few days. Rosen told Slade that he would enter the country as a Canadian photographer and would have two contacts: a local woman named Marta and a Dutch helicopter pilot. Rosen informed him that the helicopter pilot would have all of his equipment. Slade gave them a list of items that he wanted for the Dutchman to give him, and then headed to Nicaragua.

Slade entered Nicaragua during the Nicaraguan Civil War, taking pictures of the Sandinista government troops putting down riots by shooting the leader and hoarding the other rioters into cars. While taking pictures, he saw the brutality of the soldiers, who beat down several of the people before throwing them into their cars, which sped off to prisons where they would be held for their political beliefs.

He entered the Hotel Special next, taking a few pictures before meeting his contact Marta at a table. She asked him to buy her a drink, so he said that he expected her to be different. Slade asked if the officials' taking of his passport at the airport was normal, and Marta said that it was not normal, and that they probably knew who he was. She told him that the Contras informed her that Morris was in the Mediana area, and she told him that she was born there. When she said that she would accompany him to the area, Slade said that he travelled alone. She brought up the fact that he did not speak Spanish and that she did, and that he would not find the place, because it was too complicated. They both left, setting off on their mission.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union colonel Ivan Kariasin began a search for him. He picked up Slade's passport at the airport, and he knew that Slade was not really who he said he was; Kariasin said that the real "Steven Lafargue" died of terminal cancer three months ago.

Slade and Marta drove through the jungles, and when Marta asked him which name to call him, he told her to call him by his real name, John Slade. During the ride, Marta told him that her "class act" (as John called it) was because she wanted to go to America; her mother was American, explaining how she knew English. They arrived at a bridge that was destroyed near the end, waiting for the Dutchman to arrive. While they waited, John set a trap on the truck. When the helicopter arrived, a truck full of Sandinista troops also arrived, and John told the helicopter to take off. He backed up the car after setting the fuses on fire and climbed up the dropped ladder of the helicopter as his car backed into the Sandinista truck, exploding and killing the Nicaraguan troops.

When Slade entered the helicopter, the pilot introduced himself as Joop Houtman. Houtman told him that he could not land them at Oliviera, but he would get them as close as possible; his plan went wrong earlier, and he had to land at the bridge, not expecting Sandinista troops. He told Slade that his equipment was in the back, and told him that he hoped that it lasted for the next three days, when he would pick him up. Slade told him to pick him up in one day, and if he was not there, he wanted him to fly away instead.

They were dropped in the jungles, and they snuck past two squads of troops that were scouring the area for them. Slade killed one guard by snapping his neck, and Marta stabbed another guard in the throat and back. They killed four more, with Slade killing one by stabbing him from behind, another by throwing his knife in his chest, and another by shooting him with a slingshot, while Marta threw a knife in the back of another Sandinista. Slade told Marta to wait while he found a safe way through the tunnel, and he told her that he would meet her when he came back. While in the tunnel, he gunned down even more Nicaraguan troops there, and also took out a boat of them with one volley of bullets. He also used his bomb slingshot to kill several soldiers. When he was swimming down the cave's river, he was nearly killed by a Nicaraguan soldier from up high, but Marta arrived and killed the man. Marta said that she took the short way, and she resumed the mission with Slade.

Soon, they ran into a hornet's nest, and Marta came up with an idea: she would let the Sandinistas capture her, and they would probably take her to where Morris was being held. She counted on Slade to prevent the soldiers from killing her, and after shooting two Nicaraguan troops dead, she surrendered to them. Slade followed her, taking out a few Sandinista troops in the process. He cleverly used one of his strings to hang a man while he was on the top of a tree. Slade tied a grenade to the man's shirt, and when other Sandinista troops found the hanging body, Slade shot the grenade with a pistol, blowing him up and killing a few of the Sandinistas.